Justice League And Flashpoint Take August Top Spots As DC Continues To Narrow Market Share Difference With Marvel

In July, ICV2 estimated that Batman #712 sold 51,385. If that held true for August, then Justice League #1 sold 170,000 and Flashpoint #5 sold 94,000, with Fear Itself #5 on 90,000, Flashpoint #4 on 86,000 and Ultimate Fallout #4 (geaturing the first appearance of Miles Morales) on 75,000.

Despite only shipping two superhero comics through Diamond in the last week of August, DC has continued for the third month in a row to regain marketshare from Marvel. Two months ago Bleeding Cool reported how DC had narrowed the gap between the two companies from 16 points in May to 11 points in June in terms of revenue and from 18 points to 10 points difference in terms of items sold. For the month of July, DC narrowed that further to 9 points for both.

Well in August, DC has improved that. Marvel’s share of dollars has fallen from 39.43% to 37.34% and share of product from 43.59% to 42.47%, while DC’s share has risen slightly from 30.55% of dollars to 30.72% and share of product 34.76% to 34.84%.

This now gives Marvel only a seven point lead in terms of dollars spent six-and-a-half point lead in terms of product.

And next month.. all the sales on Justice League that happened after the 31st August, and the rest of the new DCU. Based on these statistics, it looks like DC may overtake Marvel for the first time in decades.

Overall, not only were comics sales up in August from July, they were significantly up from August last year. 2011 had been looking poor in comparison to 2010, but this month has done a lot to make up for that.